Riyadh – Mubasher: Sales transactions through points of sale (POS) across Saudi Arabia rose by 69% year-on-year (YoY) since the beginning of the year until mid-October to surpass SAR 2 billion.

Total buying value for those transactions amounted to SAR 269 billion, up by 21% YoY, according to a statement from Saudi Payments on Tuesday.

The number of POS devices used across different retailing sectors nationwide exceeded 614,000. Moreover, payments made via Apple Pay and mada Pay smart devices accounted for 25% of total executed transactions until the end of the third quarter (Q3).

This growth comes within Saudi Payments’ efforts to realise the goals and ambitions of the Financial Sector Development Program, one of the Vision 2030 programmes that aims to transform the Saudi society into a cashless one. It targets to execute 70% of the transactions electronically by 2030.

Furthermore, near-field communication (NFC) sales accounted for 91% of total transactions.

During the period from January until 17 October, the number of deals through POS hiked by 70.8% to 2.05 billion, compared to 1.2 billion a year earlier.

Food and beverages dominated SAR 48.83 billion on POS purchases, up by 69.1% YoY.